Colony 1: Coastline
by DarkBeta
Summary: Everyone's going on a long, long trip . . . .
1. It Will Happen on a Holiday

Colony 1: Coastline, Chapter I, by DarkBeta

(I have no rights to the Sentinel or its characters. Nevertheless i'm taking them out to play . . . a long, long way from home. Also, the Kambai Tree People here are unrelated ethnically, culturally or linguistically to any other people of similar name. [I made them up. How was I to know Blair wasn't doing the same?] This first chapter is a boring list of names and relations. If you can slog thru it, i think the next one will be better. [kowtows abjectly])

[Cascade WA, New Year's Day 1999]

Holidays were no holiday for the police. Three years as an observer had taught Blair Sandburg that much. The whole of Major Crimes was on duty for New Year's Eve.

Even Rhonda had come in, and the department secretary had a better chance than the detectives of getting out of overtime.

Captain Banks was trying to schedule substitute personnel. His son Darryl had fallen asleep on the office couch while waiting for a ride home, so Simon's usual roar was muted.

Taggert, Brown, Rafe and Connor had been drafted to answer phones. Jim was supposed to be doing the same. Instead he and the head of Forensics stood in a corner arguing whether the dried blood on a victim's shoes was the result of his stabbing (Serena's version) or his work in a slaughterhouse (Jim's version). Jim couldn't explain that he smelled the difference between bovine and human blood, so he was reduced to conviction by volume.

Blair had tried to calm them down. When Dan Wolf tracked his boss upstairs, Blair let him take a turn at intervention. A four-year-old with a Mulan bookbag lurked behind the coroner, sucking the thumb of one hand while the other clutched Dan's (blessedly unstained) white coat. Blair crouched down to her level.

"Hi, honey. You look ready for a nap."

She stared at him from almond eyes.

"Let me check with your mother, okay? Hey, Serena; is it okay if your kid lies down by Jim's desk for a bit?"

"Oh, Kimi precious, I'm sorry. Your father is going to be so mad at me. We'll go home in just a minute . . . right after this idiot admits he's theorizing in advance of his data."

"Come on, honey. Rafe will loan us his duster to make a tent. You can pretend you're camping, while your mom scolds Detective Idiot."

Jim glared. Rafe, tied to the phone, made a belated snatch as Blair whisked his duster away. Kimi looked at her mother, and then transferred her little grip to Blair's hand.

She stayed on her feet just long enough for him to make up his jacket and a spare blanket into a bed. Hung from the corner of the desk, Rafe's duster closed out some of the glare and noise. Blair sat in Jim's chair, close enough to hear if the child woke up confused.

He was taking notes on the department's interactions under stress, including the reactions of his actual subject . . . .

"I feel nostalgic. Listening to Jim yell really brings back old times."

Blair looked up from his scribbling as a blonde leaned against the desk.

"Hey, Caroline! Great to see you again! What are you doing here? How long are you staying? How's San Francisco? Need any tips on what to see? Naomi and I stayed with some guys on the Haight for a while. Have you had time to check out Golden Gate Park yet? Great museums, and . . . ."

"Slow down, kid. I just wanted to go over some business with Jim. He wasn't at the loft, and his cell was out of service, but I thought he'd probably be here. He always worked holidays before we were married"

"Uh, well, he kind of pulled double shifts. His cell phone landed in the harbor when he did yesterday, only it didn't survive the dunking."

Jim didn't show any signs of hypothermia when he climbed out of the freezing water, but some pollutant had sent him into a sensory spike. He couldn't dial down again until Blair dragged him to the showers and got him into a spare pair of sweats.

Blair meant to send a couple vials of harbor water off for chemical analysis. A trace toxin might not affect the general population as noticeably, but that didn't mean it had no effects at all.

Caroline smiled.

"The front desk told me about Jim's bust on the docks. Sounds like he could make Policeman of the Year again."

Jim's hunch (according to the official report, which Blair had just finished writing) had led to some two hundred illegal immigrants packed in a couple of cargo ship containers. Most of them were young women brought over for prostitution. Major Crimes had netted three of the smugglers, including the very unhappy man Jim pulled out of the harbor, and had a line on the rest of the ring.

The girls would survive the low night temperatures better in Cascade's holding cells, than they would have locked in an unheated container on the dock.

"So why are you still here?" Caroline asked. "As an observer, you don't need to stick around with everyone else."

Blair wasn't going to let Jim out of his sight until he was sure the effects of the harbor water were gone. Jim's ex-wife didn't need to know that.

"Don't jinx me, man! If I start the New Year lying around sleeping, the whole rest of the year will be a total bore," he obfuscated. "The first day of the year is ceremonial. It has psychic resonance!"

"Then you should be out partying with friends . . . a girlfriend."

Blair suspected Caroline was a little uneasy about the relationship between her ex-husband and a long-haired grad student with an earring. She didn't want to find out Jim had decided to appreciate the other side of the street.

"Been there, done that, got shot down big time. All indications are, this isn't going to be my year for romance."

He yawned.

"Oops. Sorry. Been a long day."

"Which is why you should be home in bed, honey. Rest is so important to keeping the chi in balance."

A redheaded woman held the corridor door open for a man in a wheelchair. The woman looked far too cheerful for the late hour. Blair gaped.

"Naomi? How did you get here? Where did you meet Professor Kelso?"

"I hitched a ride up from Santa Cruz with a botanicals supplier who dropped me off at Rainier. Jack was working late. He gave me a ride over to meet you."

"At two in the morning?"

"We were talking. Jack has an old soul. I'm sure we've met before."

Blair glared at Jack. The distinguished professor . . . smirked. Naomi smiled at Caroline.

"You have a remarkably metallic aura, almost a well-shielded as Blair's housemate. My name's Naomi, Naomi Sandburg if you go by patronymic."

"Caroline Plummer," Caroline said flatly.

"Good to see you again, Naomi."

Jim appeared at Blair's side. His look down and up made it clear his courtesy was literal. Naomi smiled. Jack snorted. Caroline became even frostier. Blair moved his elbow sharply.

"So what brings you back to Cascade?" Jim continued, unobtrusively rubbing his bruised arm.

"I was at a ley line retreat in Sedona -- you should try it, Jim; very cleansing for those bearing a heavy karmic burden -- and you'll never guess who was scheduled for the hot sand baths with me! Remember Charlie Spring? The psychic?"

She moved forward smoothly and took Jim's arm before he could step back.

"He had a hit on Blair, and you too. On your whole department. You all made quite an impression on him. We didn't understand the symbolic substance (and I'm usually good at that) so we decided I should let you know . . . ."

Jim mouthed a plea for aid. Blair grinned evilly, and then turned the expression on Kelso.

"Optimism and enthusiasm seem to be family traits," Jack said.

"Naomi doesn't let people bring her down very often. 'Detach with love', you know. Just in case, do you prefer mummification or urn burial?"

Behind Kelso the door opened again. Blair looked up.

"Whoops! Careful there!"

As the door swung closed, two over-filled grocery bags lost their equilibrium. Blair grabbed one as it tipped past 45 degrees. A short dark woman managed to retrieve the other and lower it to the floor. She looked up, biting her lip.

"Aline, what a great surprise!" Blair told her. "Look, Joel's still on the phone. I'll get someone to help you with that second bag. Ji--!"

He ran into Jim's chest as he swung around. Without hesitation Blair handed over the first bag.

"I'll take care of this stuff, Aline. You go wish someone special a happy New Year."

The woman nodded and shuffled into the room, keeping her head down. Blair stooped

for the second bag.

"Who is she?" Jim muttered. "She looks familiar . . . but I was checking mug sheets this afternoon."

"Shhh! She'll hear you. I can't believe you don't recognize her, Jim. You work with these guys!"

Across the room, Joel Taggert hung up the phone.

"Lin! I thought I wouldn't see you until I got home."

"You had to leave the potluck so early, and we had a lot of food left over . . . ."

"Jim, I brought some documents you need to look over for the property settlement . . . ."

". . . light moving among the stars is a planet, a wandering star, which had to be Blair since he's always been a traveler, eager to move on to the next experience," Naomi told Kelso, Brown, and Rafe. "We're not sure about the bright flare. Though Blair has always been a spiritually radiant person . . . ."

Brown frowned.

"Yeah, or it could be a bomb. Maybe we should get Taggert in on this."

"Blair, Aline says you have to try the lentil fritters," Joel called. "She used your recipe."

Jim handed the pen back to Caroline.

"Lawyers," he snorted. "We've been sending documents back and forth longer than we were married in the first place."

She dropped the property bill into her briefcase and batted her eyelashes at him.

"Was it good for you too?"

He laughed.

"I miss you, Caro. Come on, and I'll treat you to New Year's dinner . . . the best the snack machine can offer."

"Oh, the romance of it all. How did I ever let you get away?"

The office door slammed open again. Most of the cops turned to look. Jim's casual shuffle put him in front of Caroline. Brown put a hand on his weapon. (Since the Sunshine Patriots, some officers kept their guns close even inside the department.) A line of Asian girls filed in, shepherded by two stern-faced female uniforms.

"Officers Hill and Jiminez," the black woman said. "Family Services can't find anyone to take all the juvies until the office opens, day after tomorrow. Petrelli downstairs says, you guys found 'em, so you're stuck with them."

Her jaw dropped as a girl wiggled from the center of the covey and leaped into Blair's arms. He fell backward. The girl wailed strange fluting words. The door to the captain's office slammed open.

"What's going on out here?" Banks roared.

"Hi, Simon. Uh, business as usual?" Blair suggested from the floor.

"Yet another female making a bee-line for the kid," Brown complained. "What's he got, and why hasn't he bottled it for his friends?"

Officer Jiminez glared at Blair.

"Ay! How does she know you?"

"I met Jilcu during my stay with the Kambai tree people, Aricela. I don't like this. How did she end up in that shipping container?"

"Aricela?" the other officer hissed, as Blair sang back to the girl. "Something happening on the romance front you didn't tell me?"

"We just talked," Aricela said, blushing.

"I never did like Family Services," Naomi told a wide-faced girl in a poison-green rayon dress that ended at mid-thigh. "Blair and I had trouble with them."

The girl said something bewildered in Chinese. Naomi smiled at her.

"Don't worry, dear. Blair's friends are a little too overtly rationalist masculine, if you know what I mean, but their hearts are in the right place. Everything works out the way it should."

Unexpectedly, the girl smiled back.

Blair managed to lurch up to his feet, even with Jilcu clamped onto him. She wailed a long descant.

"I won't let the bone ghosts take you, I promise. Er, ath sutuku pa. Gesh wan."

He pried one of his arms free, and touched his lips and his forehead. Jilcu let herself be placed on her feet, but kept both hands clamped to Blair's shirt.

Most of the girls wore a teeshirt and shorts, or a short dress, with bright cloth slippers. A few were barefoot. They had backed against the wall beside the door. Three or four of the smallest were sobbing.

"They're shocky." Jim told Simon. "Where are the emergency blankets?"

Rafe dug into a dusty box at the back of the supply closet. The girls flinched away from him, so Megan and the two officers passed out army surplus wool and shiny rustling survival blankets. In the break room Rhonda brewed up a pailful of hot milky tea with lots of sugar packets, and distributed paper coffee cups. Joel and Aline spread the left-overs she'd brought on his desk: chips, onion and spinach dips, lentil fritters with tahini, teriyaki meat balls, pigs-in-a-blanket . . . .

"Don't say it!" Jim warned, as Blair opened his mouth.

Blair scribbled a quick picture of a cow and a pig instead, standing them behind the meat balls and the sausages.

"The only food taboo all the Kambai have is lemur, and Jilcu is monkey sept so she's fine, but if the others are Muslim or Hindu or something we don't want to add to their stress. Jilcu, t'peri pe? Do you want some of this?"

The girl in a green dress spoke firmly. Eight of the girls followed her, to line up behind Jilcu. Watching to be sure the looming adults didn't protest, others straggled after her.

Everyone got a few bites on a paper plate, at least. They ate kneeling on the carpet, stabbing at the food with bright plastic party pics. One of the girls tried to use two pics together as chopsticks, and sobbed helplessly when they wouldn't work.

Rhonda squatted next to the crying girl and showed her a doll and a trio of yellow and red beanbags. Blair sat down too, and Jilcu curled up with a firm grip on his shirt. He made a grab for the beanbags.

"Rhonda, you've been holding out on the office."

"I'm going over to my sister's this afternoon, but her kids have enough toys."

Blair started to juggle, badly. Every time he dropped one of the bags somebody giggled.

When he reached for the third bag and dropped all of them, the girl who giggled was the one who'd been crying. He made a mock-indignant face, and tossed them to her. Two more of the smallest girls joined in, tossing the bean bags in a circle. Blair managed to edge back.

"Time for dessert," Brown decided. "Anybody got change for the candy machine? I'm taking up a collection."

"Hot chocolate, with extra sugar," Blair decided. "It always made me feel better."

"You were so cute bouncing off the ceiling!" Naomi agreed.

"I've got a tin of organic shade grown cocoa . . . ."

Serena came back into the room with an evidence bag full of snacks. Blair was grinning as he delved into his pack.

Maybe the superstition he'd made up for Caroline was valid. The year would continue the way it began, chaotic and argumentative, full of family and friends and fascinating strangers. He and Jim would go on making a difference in the world. He couldn't think of anything better.

Hundreds of childhood farewells should have taught him better. Light like an explosion blazed along the corridor outside. The door opened, or vanished. The silhouette there was impossible to see but too small, too narrow too out of proportion. Blair put his hands out.

"Stop. Go away. We do not consent."

The light stopped. Jim saw his guide silhouetted, holding strangeness back, as if mind and will could make it comprehensible.

Then it flooded in. He saw his nightmares, and he could not move, could not keep Sandburg from being pulled away, nor help any of those he heard screaming, as the light covered and froze and carried him also.

At the very back of a bottom drawer of Rhonda's file cabinet, a package left by the janitor ticked to itself. Forty-two minutes later, its explosion destroyed three floors of the police headquarters. No-one died on any of the other floors. The Sunshine Patriots claimed responsibility.

Always cramped for work space, Rainier cleaned out Blair's office two days after the tragedy. His Sentinel research ended up in the recycling bin. Men in black suits showed up a day after that, but they went away empty-handed.

Until the day he died, Charlie Spring wore a turquoise and royal-blue friendship bracelet with Naomi's name on it.


	2. Waking Up Blind

Colony 1: Coastline, Chapter 2 by DarkBeta

**[Mountainside, Morning of Day One]**

The earth was as white and lethal as ground glass, and the sky as featureless as fog. The jaguar had searched until its paws bled, and found nothing living, no water, no stone. Nothing but the infinite white of a blank page. It crouched with ears back and tail down, panting, its eyes beginning to cloud.

The wolf had a low skulking lope, head down, and tail between its legs. Its pads bled too on the sharp sand, but it caught a scent on the still furnace air, yipped, and hurtled forward. The panther struggled to its feet and ran too. The two beasts raced toward one another, leaping to the inevitable collision.

The wolf went down, whining as a great black paw pinned it to the sand, and a broad pink tongue licked its fur. After a couple of strokes the jaguar let it up, and began to smooth its own rumpled coat. It ignored a snap of white fangs just inches from its raised ears.

The wolf shook itself indignantly, fluffing saliva-glued fur. It turned three times in a circle and stretched out, panting. They lay side by side, head to tail, each guarding the other's back. Waiting.

ooooooo

Deep in the featureless sky words rumbled like thunder.

"Damn rain. The temperature will drop after dark. We're going to lose some of the kids if we don't find better shelter. Hell, we'll lose some of us."

"This is the best we can do right now, Captain."

"Kid? Hey, Hairboy, wake up."

"Too cold. Fifteen minutes, Jim. I'll get up then. Promise." Blair mumbled.

"You'll wake up now!"

Blair blinked up at Henri, squatting beside him, and a glowering Captain Banks with Taggert at his shoulder.

"Simon? Coffee?"

"No coffee. We need you. Jim needs you."

Blair looked around at old-growth cedar and the familiar spatter of Cascade rain. Serena and Rafe and everybody, dressed for the office and not a camping trip, squatted in the partial shelter of sodden branches. His mom was there too. This had to be a post-Wonder Burger dream.

Professor Kelso in his wheelchair, dryer than anyone else under a huge white-and-red golf umbrella, had smaller forms nestled with him. Their frivolous slippers dangled. Blair scrambled up.

"The girls we rescued. Jilcu!"

Simon put a hand on his shoulder.

"They're okay for now. Serena says they should wake up inside the next half hour or so."

"Where's Jim?"

"Follow me."

Blair grabbed his pack and scrambled after Simon. They'd been in Major Crimes. He was sure of it.

"Hey, Simon. Did somebody hit me over the head or something?"

"Not unless we were all coshed." Simon said. "Here he is."

Jim had a tree to himself, though several people could have fit under its shelter. Blair didn't blame them for not wanting to share Jim's space.

"It's a zone, right?" Megan said, shivering under a nearby sapling. "I wasn't sure I wanted to bring him out of it."

Jim stood under the tree. He breathed. Every thirty seconds he blinked. Blair started toward him. Simon caught his shoulder.

"Maybe you want to think about that. We need Ellison's . . . skills. But the way he looks . . . ."

Blair had seen Jim angry. He'd seen Jim angry at him. He'd seen Jim angry enough to kill. From the expression frozen on Jim's face, he was angry enough to stake, eviscerate, incinerate, and dance howling across the remains. Killing would have to wait until he'd calmed down.

"Simon, it's Jim," Blair explained.

He twitched away from Simon's hold. Two steps got him close enough to reach one hand up to a cheek whitely corrugated with scowl lines. The other hand flattened on Jim's chest, over the heart; one more layer of protection for a vulnerable point.

"It would help if I had some idea of what you zoned on, Jim. Sight?"

He moved the hand on Jim's face up over the eyes. No change.

"If it was touch or hearing, I think you'd have reacted to me already. I'm guessing smell, or taste. And since there's major overlap here . . . ."

Jim sniffed.

"Got it! That's good, Jim. Time to start using all your senses again. Remember, turn the dials up slo-o-owly. You don't want to move too fast and . . . . Yow!"

Ellison leaped forward, shoving Sandburg to the ground and crouching over him. He grabbed a fallen branch that looked big enough to be a tree in its own right, and swung it. Simon took two steps back, his feet skidding in the wet duff. The branch end missed him. It left a raw gash on the trunk it hit instead.

"Sir?" Connor asked.

"Missed me. I'm fine."

"But did that burke hurt Sandy?"

Simon took a second look. Sandburg wasn't moving. That implied disaster. Had Ellison's sudden eruption thrown him against a rock or a tree root?

"Jim, let me up," Sandburg said patiently. "You're stepping on my hair. This Cro-Magnon shtick is so five-minutes-ago. Jim, listen to me, right now. You're grinding mud in my hair!"

"Get a haircut," Ellison said, and blinked. "What . . . ? Hell!"

He scrambled back, folded in on himself, and slumped against the tree. Sandburg sat up.

"See, Simon?" he said, picking cedar cones and needles out of his hair. "No problem."

"I attacked you." Ellison said.

His voice was flat. Unemotional, unless you looked at his eyes. Connor stalked forward.

"You bloody well did. You could have killed Sandy. What were you bloody well thinking?"

Simon had looked away from a lot of this Sentinel stuff, maybe too much. Uneasily he remembered five shots in the chest of a serial killer. If Ellison turned berserk, he couldn't function in the police.

"Ellison, I'd like an answer to that too."

Sandburg bounced up like a terrier.

"Back off, Simon. Both of you! Whatever the perps used to drag us all out here, Jim had a different reaction to it. What else is new? He's fine now. If you need him for something, tell us about it."

"Sandy, he hurt you! He knocked you down and stepped on you! We ought to be arresting him for spousal abuse or . . . or something. Uh . . . ."

Connor trailed off as she realized what she'd said. Ellison interrupted his fit of guilt to glare at her. Simon groaned. Of course Jim knew the station's gossip, but only the brash Australian observer would let it slip in front of him. Sandburg fell back on the ground, howling.

"I get . . . I get the suit . . . with the white satin cummerband," he managed to gasp. "You've all seen Jim in the kitchen with an apron on. He's definitely . . . the little wifey."

Ellison leaned back and thumped his head firmly against the tree trunk. He did it again. Sandburg hauled himself to his feet, lurched over to Connor, and threw an arm around her shoulders.

"Don't worry, Megan. Jim and I are just good friends. You're still on for dancing on Saturday, right? We won't tell Jim I'm two-timing him."

Connor had turned a vivid scarlet, an unfortunate accent to her fuschia blouse.

"Uh, I think I'll go . . . I think I'll go see if Joel needs any help. Excuse me!"

Simon folded his arms.

"If you're quite finished humiliating a co-worker, Sandburg, thirty or forty kids are going to be really sick unless Ellison can find us some shelter . Is that clear?"

"Co-worker? You mean I'm a cop after all? Cool."

He smiled at Simon, but his stance was challenging. The slight to Ellison hadn't been forgiven.

"You listen here, Sandburg," Simon started.

The sentinel flowed to his feet.

"Yes, sir!" he barked from a perfect parade rest. "We'll get right on it."

He caught Sandburg's arm and started up the slope, ushering the kid rather emphatically in front of him.

"Sandburg, you know how a guy will say, his wife doesn't understand him?" Simon called after them.

"Now, that line actually has an interesting age-linked cultural distribution, Simon . . . ."

"You ever bother to get married, it'll be true. Nobody can understand you. And I'm Captain Banks!"

"Oh, right. Sorry, Simon."

ooooooo

Simon crashed his way down the slope. Here he was, lost in the woods. Again. The bastards involved Darryl this time, not to mention the other civilians. He'd see them put away for centuries.

"Dad!"

Darryl ran toward him. Simon swept him into a hug, forgetting for a moment that his son was a teenager who hated that baby stuff. Darryl didn't pull away.

Most of Major Crimes was trying to prop sticks and branches into temporary shelters. Joel held his wife as she sobbed. Plummer, Chang, and Wolf were evaluating the juveniles. Under an enviably wide umbrella, Sandburg's professor friend and Naomi cuddled Kimi and a couple of the smallest girls. As soon as Simon looked up from his son, Rhonda headed toward him with a steno pad in her hand.

"Is Detective Ellison all right?" she asked.

"Sandburg thinks so," Simon grunted.

"Oh, good. We're fairly sure everyone who was on duty in our area is here, along with the civilians. That's forty-two people, seventeen adults and twenty-five children. All the adults are awake, and some of the older girls. Taggert, Brown, Rafe and Officers Hill and Jiminez have their weapons, which appear not to have been tampered with."

"Good work, Rhonda. Add two more weapons to that count. Possibly three."

Simon put a hand on the holster hidden by his jacket. He'd seen Jim's weapon too, though Jim himself seemed to have forgotten it during his fit of . . . whatever. Simon hadn't actually seen Jim's hideout weapon, but he was willing to assume its continued existence.

Serena Chang stood up, and came to join them.

"They going to be okay?" Simon asked, nodding toward the children still sleeping, and those barely awake.

Chang glanced quickly at her daughter.

"I think so. I'd be happier if I knew what the perps used on us, but so far everyone has woken up without noticeable aftereffects."

Officer Jiminez gaped at the activity around her. Hill glared.

"Typical. That's just typical. Take these kids up to Major Crimes, they say. No trouble at all, they say. Good job for a woman, they think. And look what happens!"

A girl in a green dress stood up, weaving a little and grabbing a branch for support. She swept a hand out to indicate the other huddled girls.

"Please. Colded. Fear-ed. Help."

"Miss, we will do everything we can to get you all to safety. Trust us," he told her.

She didn't look convinced, but she sat down. The girl beside her asked a question, and then relayed the answer in another language. Simon watched information percolate through the huddle, as wary dark eyes fixed on him. How was he going to live up to his pledge? He looked away.

"Ellison and Sandburg are out looking for a better campsite." he announced. "Until they get back, we need to stay as warm and dry as possible."

Brown glanced up at the dripping branches and grey sky, and looked dubious. Simon folded his arms.

"Back to work, everybody. Sitting there isn't going to make you any warmer!"

oooooooo

At the pace Jim set, Blair was panting for breath again long before they neared the top of the ridge. Jim pushed him into the partial shelter of a dripping spruce.

"Ten minutes." he said.

"Oh, thanks, man. I just need a minute. Let me catch my breath, and I'm good to go."

Blair scrubbed at his hair, trying to squeeze some of the water out. He jumped when Jim finally broke his silence.

"Can you stop trying to piss off Simon? You don't need any more suicidal habits, besides following me around."

"That does it," Blair said. "I'm not taking that from Megan, I'm not taking it from Simon, and I'm not taking it from you. You didn't attack me."

"I knocked you down and pinned you on the ground. Looked like an attack to Connor. Looks like one to me."

"You have to view the context! You guys are all fixated on one subset of an ongoing continuum. Look, from your point of view, you smelled something you abhorred. From what I've seen of sentinel responses, that means something that could hurt the tribe, something you couldn't protect us from."

"What?"

"How should I know?"

"If it's dangerous, I need that info."

"We can try hypnotism again, but this isn't a safe place for a trance. You don't smell it now, right?"

What did he smell? Forest and rain. Blair's alertness, but not his fear. Traces of something claustrophobic, but those were old and fading. He shook his head.

"We'll deal with it later." Blair said with absolute confidence. "Are you going to let me finish?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No. As I was saying, the stench of evil is so overwhelming that you zone."

"The stench of evil?"

Jim snorted at the hyperbolic description. Blair forged on.

"For you, time isn't happening. You're in the moment you sensed that thing, when you knew what a danger it was. And then, presto! There I am in front of you. What do you do?"

"Knock you down and step on you," Jim repeated.

Why was Blair denying that simple fact? Jim had hurt him. He'd gone into a zone, and he'd hurt someone. Blair took a step forward and poked a finger at him.

"Put me down out of range, and got between me and something your instincts don't think you can stop. Jim, you were protecting me. I know it. Megan and the Captain will understand as soon as I explain it to them. Look at the sequence of events, and tell me I'm wrong!"

Jim took a deep breath. When he let it out, the tension vibrating along his shoulders and spine seemed to go with it.

"So. Knocking you out of the way is okay."

"Nope. However I refuse to get mad at your, you'll pardon the expression, high-handedness. Your heart was in the right place."

"Thank you, Mr. Hallmark."

Blair put a hand on his shoulder.

"You're the survival expert. Tell me what kind of shelter we should be looking for in this terrain. Maybe we can figure out some way for you to scan for it."

"How many people?"

"Everybody in Major Crimes, and those girls, and a handful of others . . . at least sixty."

"For a day or two, maybe an overhanging embankment, far enough above the water that we won't be flooded out. We just have to hope it doesn't come down on us."

"You should be able to feel the vibrations if it's unstable. I can climb up and jump on it or something."

"Once we're there," Jim said.

"Right. Uh, probably everybody else in the forest is trying to stay out of the rain. Instead of having you smell dry, or hear where the rain isn't . . . ."

"Smell what?"

". . . why don't you listen for wildlife? You know, lots of heartbeats, little tiny claws scrabbling in the dust, that kind of thing."

"Rats."

"Yhaven't even tried. Don't give up already!"

"Sounds like rats are what I'm listening for."

Blair swatted him, but then he flattened his hand on Jim's back again. His words went on, anchor and direction, as the sentinel searched the forest for what his tribe needed.


	3. Intimations

Colony 1: Coastline, Chapter 3, by DarkBeta

**(Mountainside, Afternoon of the First Day)**

"Got it," Jim said. "Over the ridge, closer to where we were dropped."

Blair pulled himself to his feet.

"Ugh. More hiking. Why do we always hit the wilderness when it's cold?"

"Peru was warm."

"Peru had angry drug lords with private armies. So, what are you trying to find now?"

Jim hadn't gotten up. His eyes were half-shut. From the cant of his head, he was scanning for scent this time instead of sound.

"The air is . . . wrong."

"Wrong? How? Stinky?"

If Jim hadn't been so focussed on scent, he would have heard the jump in Blair's pulse. Some enemy knocks out Major Crimes, and dumps them all in the wilderness. Pretty non-violent for anyone willing to go to that much trouble. So, add something more. Dump them on a volcano about to blow, maybe. Or downwind of nerve-gas testing grounds.

Gods. If Jim was the target, being downwind of a crop-duster was enough. Or a backyard gardener spraying his orchids. Maybe the rest of them were along as helpless witnesses, watching Jim die. What was Blair supposed to do? Tell him to stop breathing?

"It's empty," Jim discovered. "Nothing added, but something missing."

Missing? Easy enough -- too easy -- to dump stuff in the atmosphere, but how did you take stuff out? Blair put a hand on Jim's shoulder again.

"Think about how the air smelled the last time we went camping. Clean, wet, a bit turpentine from the pines. Now lay those two scents together, just like a couple of transparencies . . . ."

"See-through smells?" Jim complained.

But he was trying. Blair could see his concentration.

"Use the sieve. Cancel out whatever is the same. Cedars, rain, wet ground . . . . What's left over?"

"Exhaust. Lead. Acid. Sulfur. It's all missing. I don't smell anything human. And too many animals. Bears . . . grizzlies. And pumas. We're not close to Cascade, or any city."

Jim hadn't enjoyed his visit to the Cascade Zoo, or memorizing the scents of the large local predators. (Not to mention some non-local ones.) Using bribery and threats, Blair had insisted. With the number of times they'd gotten stranded in the wilderness, and the trouble they found there, he wanted an early-warning system for anything big and hungry.

"O-okay. We can figure this out. The Northwest Coast rainforest is a kind of unique ecosystem. They can't have taken us too far. Maybe Canada? No, what am I thinking? It's January. We'd freeze our assets off."

"The levels aren't just low. All that stuff isn't here."

"There are lead residues and DDT in Antarctic snow samples. You can't get away from it," Blair insisted.

His hands tried to explain the impossibility of leaving civilization's poisons behind. One scraped against the rough trunk.

"Ow!"

He shook it out, still talking. Jim turned and caught his arm.

"Pain," Jim said.

"What? What's hurting? Did you spike?"

"Your pain. That's what I smelled. That's what I zoned on."

"But I'm fine. Well, freezing and hungry and about to keel over, but aside from that . . . ."

"My eyes wouldn't open. All I could hear was machines. I thought I was the only one. On a table, for experiments."

His lips drew into a snarl. The grip on Blair's arm tightened. Blair ignored it. Scent, again. Jim had focused on scent, and it was drawing him back into his furious trance.

"Jim, look at me. Listen to my voice. Feel my arm. You can remember what happened, because you're safe here. Do you hear me, Jim? Nod your head if you hear me."

Stiffly, Jim nodded.

"I smell it. Leather, mushrooms and ozone. It comes through a . . . a door? Passage? I feel the pressure change."

"You did? Cool!"

"All I can see is light. I taste . . . hours. All at once. Surprise at the beginning. Disbelief. Shame. Tears. They can't gag tears the way they do screams. Or they don't care. Anger. It tastes like smoke, Chief. Did you know that?"

"I didn't know that. Can you still hear me, Jim? What you remember is over. You can come back here any time."

"Exhaustion. Despair. In the hospital, that smell means the patient is going to die. Even if the doctors think they're getting better. And I'm thinking, that other stuff could mask it. I have to sort the smells out, the way you told me to. I have to find it."

"You remembered what I told you? What did you need to find, Jim?"

"Decay. Death. I need to know if you're dead before I let go."

"That's enough! I'm not dead, you hear me? Nobody's dead. And you don't want to know what will happen if you don't start listening to me, right now!"

Blair's voice had a sergeant's bark. The sentinel exhaled, and blinked. He unclamped the hand on Blair's arm, watching as restored circulation flushed the white imprint. One finger moved to brush under Blair's eye. The other man didn't blink.

"Pain. And tears. I know what I smelled." He shook his head. "The rest of it though . . . I must have been dreaming."

"You don't dream in a zone," Blair insisted. "Remember when I snuck you into the lab and hooked up REM monitors?"

Jim stood up.

"I thought I could figure out who took us, but it's a waste of time. We need to go check that overhang. Make sure it's safe before we move everyone."

"They weren't human. That's what your senses tell you, Jim. Am I right?"

"You're not getting enough sleep. Naomi's right. You stay up watching that show with the spooky music too much."

"Aliens," Blair said. "We were abducted by aliens. This world doesn't smell like humans have lived here, because we didn't."

He bounced on his toes, as if being stranded on another planet by aliens rated up there with roller-coaster rides.


	4. Darkness Falls

**Colony 1: Coast 4****, by DarkBeta**

**(Mountainside, Night of the First Day)**

["Jilcu, your father and your father's brother gave me space on the family platform. As I was their brother, I am your father while they are not here. I will not abandon you. But you must release me a brief time!"]

Blair used the Kambai word "stu'utsul". It meant, "the period for reheating porridge". Which took five or six minutes, according to Eli's pocket watch, so Blair figured out that "stahul" (the period for stewing iitsu pulp) was about half an hour. His journal article on gender differentiated vocabularies for time was footnoted in two other publications. And the word for boiling was the same as the word for blossoming. Funny how much Kambai he still remembered.

["Do not depart from me, Short-hair. You will fall. You will vanish with no footprints. The bone ghosts will come with thunder again. The father-trees will burn and the platforms fall. The hunters will fall, burning. The weavers will fall, burning."]

She did not cry or raise her voice. She only listed the elements of disaster, with her white-knuckled hands locked on Blair's flannel shirt.

"She sure latched onto you, Chief."

"I really, really need to get her to let go!"

Jilcu had been, what, six years old when he visited the Kambai? Seven? Her father Akkupei had been the younger brother of the shaman, recuperating on the family platform from being gored by a wild pig. An unskilled stranger's wild questions offered some respite from boredom. Jilcu had sat behind them, and spent hours trying to wind Blair's short uncooperative hair into some semblence of a hunter's knot.

She couldn't be more than fourteen now. He needed to find out what had happened. First he needed to visit the hastily dug latrine though, and she offered a certain impediment.

["Since I left the father-trees, Jilcu, I have found my hunt-brother. You know the strength of the bond between hunt-brothers."]

Jilcu pursed her lips in agreement.

["So I will say to my hunt-brother, that for a short time he must guard my daughter. Do you think I chose a hunt-brother who will fail me?"]

Jim had given his shirt to one of the other children. Crouched at the upper edge of their narrow camp, far from the fire, he didn't look much like a policeman. He did, however, make a very impressive tribal guardian of the sort Burton investigated. Jilcu eyed him warily. Finally she ducked her head, acceding to Blair's judgement.

"Right. Jim, you're babysitting."

He gave Jilcu a gentle push in Jim's direction, and headed for the latrine.

When he came back to the campsite, the situation had changed. He and Jim and Jilcu had been at the edge of the encampment, far enough from the others that Jim could let his senses range. In the few minutes Blair was gone, Jim's solitary figure had become the still hub of a wheel of girls.

Which didn't sound so bad, except that they were all teenagers, and some dozen or so conversations in an equal number of languages rolled around the sentinel. Blair recognized Chinese and Thai for sure, and a snatch of Tagalog. This was serious. Jim was doing his "I'm about to explode" impression, hard to ignore and amazingly effective at quelling incipient urban unrest, but the girls didn't seem to notice.

"Uh, Jim, what happened?"

"Ask your little friend. She yelled something, and all the others came over and started jabbering. What were you two talking about before you ran off?"

"Uh, I just told her I'd act in loco parentis, that's all. Trying to reassure her, you know, so she'd calm down enough to let go of me. The Kambai have a very firm idea of paternal duties, and familial ties . . . ."

["Jilcu the daughter of Beler Sonberek asks that her father greet the sisters of Jilcu, the other daughters of his house-platform. Here is Li Hua and Jun and . . . ."]

ooooooo

Females often gravitated toward Sandburg, but this was ridiculous. A girl would come up to the kid and babble. He'd babble back, though not always in the same language. She'd bob, or bow, or genuflect. One girl lay on the ground and put her hair on Blair's feet. Then she pulled another girl forward and the whole thing started over. Everybody was staring.

"Hey, Darwin, what's going on?"

The last girl walked away from Blair to curl up with the rest. She was smiling. Several of them were. It looked unnatural, on faces that had been sober for so long.

"I don't have any cigars."

Okay. They'd made a left turn into the Sandburg zone again.

"What?"

"I'll have to ask Simon if he'll hand them out for me." Blair said. "I'm a father. Oh, man, am I a father! I need to come up with some kind of pan-cultural adoption ritual in a hurry. See, I told Jilcu I was sort of her adopted father. And she decided that all the other girls were her adopted sisters, because they'd lived on the same platform -- that's the ship they were in -- so I have to be their father too."

"You're supposed to be their daddy? Ridiculous."

"Maybe something with the same symbolism as cigars. Sausages?"

"Stop it. Tell them they made a mistake."

The whole idea was ridiculous. No-one in the world -- in any world -- was less fatherly than Blair. Yes, he'd calmed down a couple of the girls who kept sobbing. He listened to their stories while Jim and Simon and the others were rebuilding lean-to shelters. He managed by mime and a few broken words to explain where they should sleep and also, blushing, where to take care of other matters.

But setting limits would be impossible, for a guy who didn't admit to any. Yelling at the kids, making sure they toed the line . . . . Blair was just a kid himself. Why should these teenagers trust him? Jim certainly hadn't, not until the kid knocked him down and kept him from being creamed by a garbage truck. Not always, even afterwards.

Look at him now. Staring at Jim with puppy-dog eyes like he was eight years old and wanted a fire truck for Christmas. He didn't look old enough to nurse a beer, let alone a traumatized child.

"They need somebody, Jim. Being stranded is scary for all of us, but at least all you guys from the station know you can rely on each other. I mean, you're sort of like family, right? The girls don't have any reason to trust us though. In most cultures the only halfway reliable allies belong to kin-groups. Under the circumstances it's a psychologically reasonable adaptation."

"If they want a father-figure, let Simon have them. Or Joel. Someone who's got half a chance to pull it off."

"Why not me?"

"Two words, kid. Table leg."

It was the nastiest thing he could think of to say. He knew it, and he said it anyway. Blair's silence told him he was in trouble.

They had both frozen, like duellists after the shots were fired, waiting to see who would fall. When the younger man finally spoke, his voice was so low Jim had to screen out the babbling teenagers to hear it. The white taut hands didn't move at all.

"Ushi's father sold her in the marketplace, to a woman who was going to the city. She thinks it was because she ate too much. The man who came to Jarita's village said he was hiring girls to work as hotel maids. Kim is about four months pregnant. She says she's fifteen already, but I think she's at least a year younger. The police sold Li Hua when they learned her mother didn't have enough money to buy herself out of jail. Kirsi's stepfather . . . ."

Jilcu knew something was wrong. She stared. Jim could hear her heart accelerate. He put his hands out, motioning traffic to a stop.

"I get the point already. I guessed their lives weren't sweetness and light."

"You thought I'd hit on them anyway."

Blair's voice was still flat.

"Wait a minute, Chief. I didn't mean . . . ."

"I don't think I should talk to you right now. Later. Maybe."

The kid was getting up. He was going to walk away. Blair didn't do that. He didn't walk away from a confrontation. He got right up in your face, and it didn't matter if you were twice his size, or armed, or out of your head. He kept plugging away until you saw things his way.

"So don't talk. Listen!"

Blair stopped, but he didn't turn around. A reprieve, but no pardon. Not yet. Time to talk fast.

"I was joking, that's all. You threw me for a loop. Or the kids did, or maybe this place. I was just trying to do something normal . . . ."

Did that sound as thin to Blair as it did to Jim? The kid turned around and stared. His frozen look vanished in a flare of comprehension. Jim would have felt relief, but he wasn't sure what Blair had seen. The look of analysis vanished just as quickly into an exaggerated huff.

"Teasing me is normal."

"Um, yeah. You didn't notice? I must be too subtle for you."

The kids hands were moving now, his face alive with indignation.

"You, subtle? I don't think so. Insulting. Demeaning. Insensitive . . . ."

"Yup." Jim said. "So, what else is new?"

He knew he'd gotten away with it when Blair snorted.

"Neanderthal."

"New age hippie."

"Tests." Blair said, and yawned. "Lots and lots of tests. Sense memory comparisons. What's different about this place, and what's the same. Actually, if we ever do have interplanetary exploration, sentinels would be practically necessary for first contact. Pick up trace organic compounds . . . ."

He almost hit himself in the face, trying to cover another monster yawn.

"A couple of your girls are out on their feet."

"My daughters." Blair said.

"If you sit down a little closer to the fire, maybe they'll follow your example. Tell 'em its curfew. Bedtime."

"Bedtime. Right."

He sat down. Jim managed not to ululate his victory.

Blair fell asleep leaning against him. In the dark nightmares came. Jim heard Jilcu stumble toward them. She froze when she saw Jim was awake. Huddled in her blanket like a cloak, rubbing tears off her face, she was ready to run. Jim patted the ground.

"Go ahead," he said, looking in another direction as if he was trying to lure a wary cat. "He wants you to feel safe. We're all going to do our damnedest to make sure you're safe."

She wasn't the only child to wake afraid. Jilcu, Sur and Radhu, all coccooned in their blankets, dozed off leaning against Blair. Chingwei, Ai, Tao and Jin Hee made do with Jim. Even after she'd stopped crying, Ai snuffled gently in her sleep. Puppies. They were tangled together like puppies. Blair wasn't shivering any more.

Jim saw a guardian with his face, awake on an empty blue plain. Blair, painted like a Chopec shaman, held a basket of palm fiber patterned with jaguar masks and the sacred mountain and the triumphant sun.

"What do we guard?" the guardian asked.

"A basket." Jim said.

"What do we guard?"

"Uh, treasure?"

Damn, he hated these riddle games. The spirit with Blair's form opened the basket. It was empty. Nothing but darkness inside.

"What do we guard?"

"Everything, man, everything." Blair murmured. "The future."

But he was still asleep. Jim listened to a heartbeat like a slow calm drum, and breath like the rolling surf. One of the children tried to roll over, and her neighbor protested.

"This." Jim thought. "Now."


	5. Reaction

**Colony 1, Chapter 5: Reaction**

**Mountainside, Morning of the Second Day**

In a hollow of the streambank, Aline Taggert stared at nothing. Joel held her, but she didn't seem to know it. Her arms were folded around one of the paper sacks she'd carried into Major Crimes. Its pans and bowls clacked monotonously as she rocked back and forth.

Blair squatted in front of them. Joel's eyes were dry, though he had cried during the night.

"She was doing so well," he said. "Starting to feel safe again. When she went to that party on her own . . . ."

"Mrs. Taggert needs time to adjust, like the rest of us," Blair soothed. "I mean, look at my mom."

Kelso had fallen asleep with one hand still locked on the wheel of his chair. The night before Naomi had folded herself into a lotus position next to him. She hadn't moved since, aside from whispering a mantra under her breath.

"This morning before it got light, I put in some serious meditation myself. You know, maybe I should try to get everyone together for a group session. All of us breathing together, getting in touch with this earth and centering our chi . . . ."

"Are you going to suggest that to the Captain?" Joel asked. "If so, I want to watch."

Blair grinned.

"It'll be even better if I can get him and Jim together."

He put a hand on Aline's arm.

"Aline, I need to ask you something. Is there any more food in your bag? The children are hungry. Aline?"

Several minutes went by without a response. Joel moved restlesssly.

"I'll check for you." he started to say.

Blair shook his head. Joel fell silent again. After several minutes Aline's rocking slowed. Her gaze moved to Blair's face.

"Hungry?"

He nodded.

"I'm hungry." she discovered.

"I think we all are." Blair agreed.

"There's a pan of chili left, and the jelled salad . . . ."

Her arms relaxed. Blair caught the bag as it started to tilt. She leaned back against Joel.

"Oh, you're so warm."

Joel whispered in her ear. Aline ducked her head.

"Shhh. Someone might hear!"

She looked at Blair again, almost catching his triumphant smile. He managed to be fascinated by the paper bag.

"A cast-iron pot! Aline, I could kiss you!"

"The Romeo of Cascade? I'm not giving you the chance!" Joel said, hugging his wife.

He let his hold loosen as she sat forward.

"And I had extra fruit for the garnish . . . ."

"Thank you," Joel mouthed over her shoulder.

And Blair's expression said, "For what?"

Later, stirring the chili as it heated on a bed of coals, Aline asked, "Did he say, 'this earth'?"

ooooooo

The bean pottage tasted very bad, but it was hot on a cold day. The bit of fruit and jelly afterward took the taste away. Later, while the dark woman cook brewed a medicinal drink in the same pot, the man who said he would be their father now led them to smooth rocks by the stream and clapped his hands.

"May I have your attention?" he called to the other strangers, and then turned to Li Hua and her sisters from the ship.

"Honored daughters, I want to introduce my friends to you. This is Captain Simon Banks, who is the boss -- you can call him Captain."

Li Hua hurried to turn his words into Mandarin for those who knew it, undistracted by concurrent translations from Meiying, Kwan Sook, Hanh and Chana. At the front of the line Radhu bowed. Everyone else hurried to imitate her.

["Big-big man."] Bian whispered in the argot they'd created, the only language they all had in common. ["New-Fa give him daughter for bed, hope-hope not me."]

["Big-big man not all time bad. Small-small man act big-big, that bad."] Hyogi whispered back, rubbing the old burn scars on her chest.

"If you are afraid and can't see me or Jim, go to him. Right, Simon?"

"Uh, that's right. Don't worry, girls. Everything's going to be fine."

He had said as much to Li Hua the day before, and things were not fine yet. He was strong, and loud, and the others obeyed him, so she bowed. He had let Sonberek give his daughters most of the food, so she did not bow too deeply. She did not understand why Sonberek had status in this group, but whatever status she and the others had depended on his. She would not surrender any of it that she could avoid.

"This young man is Darryl Banks, the Captain's son. You can call him Darryl."

Everybody bowed, much more smoothly this time. The dark young man stared, and then jerked into a bow himself.

"Hi-nice-to-meet-you."

["Boy. Not wife?"] Kirsi said hopefully.

["You-me for wife? You-me dirt-dirt. You small-small think."] Hyogi scolded.

"Joel Taggert is second after the Captain, and very kind. He will listen if you need to talk. Call him Mr. Taggert. You know his wife, Aline. She gave us the food we just had. Call her Mrs. Taggert."

Over by the fire, Mrs. Taggert saw their attention. She waved a little, and ducked her head. Li Hua almost staggered at the acknowledgement. Sonberek's status must be higher than she'd guessed, if a respectable wife acknowledged them and her husband didn't interfere.

"Henri Brown, Rafe and Megan Connor work for the Captain. You can call them Brown, Rafe or Connor . . . or Detective, if you can't remember their names."

"And call him Hairboy, if you can't remember his." Brown told them.

"Let me know if you have any problems with these yobbos. I'll sort them out." Connor promised.

Rafe just smiled and said hello. Everybody bowed in a nice even line, except Kirsi who was staring at Rafe.

["Pretty man!"] she sighed.

Hyogi wryed her mouth.

["Wa! Woman, got gun. Gun for me, shoot all man-man!"] Yuchun said enviously.

"You met Rhonda before . . . before we came here. She works for the Captain too, and keeps track of everything important for us. It's okay if my daughters call you Rhonda, right?"

"Of course."

They bowed. Ai held up the doll she'd been carrying around, to give it back. She looked like she was about to cry.

"No, you keep it, honey. Just so long as everyone who wants to can play with it."

["You-me not child!"] Chingwei said indignantly.

["For bed for Captain Simon?"] Tao wondered, and Kerani shrugged.

"Officers Sarah Hill and Aricela Jiminez work for the Captain too, sort of. You can call them Hill and Jiminez, or Officer . . . ."

"Make that Sarah and Ari, okay?" one of the women said, and the other nodded and smiled.

["Wa! Three for bed for Captain?"] Tao asked.

["Big-big man."] Hyogi said ironically.

["Gun. Gun. Woman not shoot all? Huh?"]

Yuchun didn't understand. Li Hua could see her eyeing the guns. As soon as they were private, they all needed to talk. If nothing else, shooting a few of the strangers would make the others angry, and do no good to anyone.

"Serena Chang and Dan Wolf are, uh, doctors. Caroline Plummer too. You can call them Ms. Chang, Mr. Wolf and Ms. Plummer. And Kimi is Serena's daughter. Come on, Kimi. Don't be shy. Can you smile for all my daughters?"

Kimi giggled as they all bowed, and then buried her head against her mother. Serena didn't look at them.

"They're all underfed, Sandburg, and a few of them have nutritional deficiencies. I'm really hoping they don't present with anything infectious, because we've all been exposed by now. Try to limit their vectors, if you know what I mean. Of course Kimi's had her infant and child shots, and if we work in the morgue we're required to stay up-to-date on TB and . . . ."

"I really appreciate that, Serena. Don't worry. Maybe in a few days you can do some individual check-ups, after my daughters are a little less stressed -- and I've had a chance to feed them up a little?"

"Well, yes, if we're really stuck out here that long. Are you sure it's a good idea to play along with this delusion . . . ?"

"Thanks again, Serena!"

["Plummer for bed for Jim."] Ushi noted.

Li Hua shivered. Better the female stranger than her. The Captain was recognizable as a boss with his men around him. A good boss, who knew his position was secure. Jim was another recognizable type. An enforcer. Not a house guard, or even a bodyguard to the boss, but the man who solved problems for the man the boss paid money to.

A man like that taking orders from the Captain was odd, but explainable. Maybe the Captain was getting ready to move closer to the top, or maybe the top man wanted to make sure he didn't have any troubles. What didn't make sense, was his connection to Sonberek.

By appearance, Li Hua would have said that Sonberek was for Jim's bed. They touched often, but not that way. Jilcu said they were some kind of brothers. Born to different concubines, maybe. Sometimes Sonberek deferred to Jim the way a younger brother should. Yet sometimes he scolded or teased as if he was the older brother, or even gave commands.

It was confusing. Yet Jim's regard for Sonberek was the only proof Li Hua had that Jilcu was right, and Sonberek could protect the daughters he claimed.

"This is my teacher, Professor Jack Kelso. You can call him Mr. Kelso, or Professor. And this is my mother, Naomi."

If Naomi had been the concubine of Sonberek's father, she was the favored one. She had the gift of enchantment even as an old woman.

Before things went strange Naomi had smiled. Li Hua had been suddenly (and briefly) certain that she didn't need to worry. And the dangers she feared when the younger girls were taken from the other women, had not yet appeared. However confusing this place was, these people had not used or hurt her sisters. The red-haired woman was a reminder of that. Li Hua took a deep breath, letting the chi flow.

"Call me Naomi, please. My Blair is always so enthusiastic. Having so many daughters at once, is just what I should have expected. Now I'm not used to the grandmother's life-path yet, so why don't you think of me as, say, an older sister?"

"I'm sure we're all fine with that." Sonberek said. "Grandma Sandburg."

The cripple in the wheelchair snorted. And then snorted again, turning red. Naomi gave him a horrified look. Li Hua took a step back, and the others shifted with her. Was he going to have a fit?

Kelso leaned over the arm of his chair, laughing so hard he couldn't stay upright.

"You're a terrible son. You were just saving that line, weren't you!" Naomi choked, laughing almost as hard as the cripple.

Mata giggled. Then all of them were laughing, even Li Hua, though she had no idea what was funny. Blunt Kwan Sook had to spoil it.

"Now you say, what man you give us to. Or all of them? I do not want cripple. Give Kim or Ai to him."

Li Hua knew why she'd said it. Kwan Sook had decided that the cripple was not able to use them badly, and was trying to push the most vulnerable of them in his direction. You could not change things in the open though, when men's status was at risk and kindness would be seen as weakness. You had to work subtly. A few words, an illicit favor, punishment accepted without confession . . . .

The cripple and Sonberek were both angry, with a rage that poor Kwan Sook did not deserve. Naomi was glaring at her son. What would happen if Sonberek's standing depended on his mother's? Would Grandmother tell him to disown them? The enforcer appeared by Sonberek's shoulder. He was angry too. How badly would they hurt Kwan Sook? If she was worth too much to damage, would they punish someone else? Kim, who was ill so often, and might die when the baby came?

ooooooo

Blair could see all twenty-nine paragraphs of his mother's favorite lecture on self-actualization about to burst forth.

"Thanks, but not yet, Naomi." he said hurriedly. "Jack, I'm sorry! Let me explain things to them. Unless you want the rude one. I mean, my daughters and I owe you a pretty big apology."

"Blair Sandburg! How dare you say something so demeaning in front of these poor girls? They are individuals, responsible for their own harmony, and if your negative energies are going to block their development . . . ."

"Responsible individuals don't insult my friends in front of me."

He could see Jack fighting the anger they both felt, at the men who had shaped these girls' expectations. The real targets were out of reach though, and Jack's sense of humor quashed any remaining hurt.

"Thank you for the offer, Sandburg, but I'll pass. My present company is so much more interesting."

Blair didn't understand the statement whispered indignantly behind him, but if it didn't translate to, "But she's so old!" he'd be surprised. Kelso's return jab had gotten through. Naomi dropped her indignation long enough to laugh.

"So gallant!" she said, with a fair attempt at a simper.

She'd been headed off, at least for now. All Blair had to do was explain the situation to the girls, and then maybe he could take time to worry about Jim's sudden streak of jealousy.

"Honored daughters, let's go talk about how you should behave." He turned around, ran into Jim, and bounced. "Jim, will you please stop doing that? Make some noise, so a person knows you're there."

Blair led them back under the overhanging stream bank, and hoped everyone else would give them at least the illusion of privacy. As soon as he sat down, all twenty-five children did too, and stared at him somberly.

It wasn't the students who misbehaved in class who scared him. He could deal with that. It was the ones who watched him, and took copious notes, and he didn't know if they understood or were just writing down the words. Some of the conclusions those students produced in exams were terrifyingly wide of the mark.

"All right. Start at the beginning. You all come from different places, right?"

He paused for a flurry of translation. These girls -- his daughters -- had organized themselves into a remarkable community. Did their society evolve, or was there some guidance? Did he have a daughter who could arrange something so amazing? Finally everyone nodded agreement.

"You know that different people do the same things differently. Eat with a fork instead of eating sticks, for example."

He tamped down his professional interest in the creole that sputtered back and forth. Even if no-one but himself and Jim knew it, they weren't on Earth any longer. He couldn't plan an article on accelerated language adoption within forced cross-cultural groupings. Though he could take a few notes, for his own satisfaction.

Hanh waved for attention, mimed eating with her hands, and sat back looking disgusted. Blair decided to start whittling chopsticks between now and whenever they ate lunch.

"Everywhere, adults do some things children do not. Sex is one of those things."

That caused some disagreement. Blair felt like a hypocrite. He'd been, what, fifteen? About the same age as some of these girls. Although the circumstances were a lot more wholesome.

"Yes," Li Hua reported, dubiously. "So we are adults."

"No you're not." Jim told them.

"I'm the one having the father-daughter talk here. Honored daughters, where you were before, you were treated like adults." Slight emphasis on the 'treated'. "Here, it is much harder for a girl to become a woman."

"How hard?" Kwan Sook asked. "Is why many men, few women?"

"What are tests? What if girls fail? Do they die?"

Li Hua was obviously picturing ordeals like carrying a pot of hot coals, or starving in the wilderness on a vision quest. At the back of the group, Bian whimpered.

"Easy, easy! My daughters must learn many things before it is proper for you to behave as an adult. You will have much time for it, um . . . ."

He calculated hastily. Assume an average age of about fifteen, add on enough time to make sure they would count as adult back home, figure on coming up with some special circumstances for those girls who needed even more time. His people would have survived long enough to know what skills were needed, and even the stubbornest individuals (reacting to unconscious postural cues Jim stepped out of range of an elbow jab) would know their stranding was permanent.

". . . three or four years at least before the women accept you among them."

"Wa!"

You could judge the success of a lecture by the liveliness of the discussion that followed. Blair tried to decide who was on the

"No men?" side of the question, as opposed to "Only four years?" Why was Yuchun pretending to shoot?

"You will teach us?" Li Hua asked, acting as the spokesperson again.

"I will teach you some things, but you must learn from everyone in order to become part of my . . . ."

Another last minute hunt for the right answer. Family? But the girls needed more security than just him and Naomi. Or even him and Jim.

". . . tribe." Blair said.


	6. Recourse

**Colony 1: Coastline, Chapter 6****, by DarkBeta**

**(Mountainside, About Noon, Second Day)**

Naomi had a spool of monofilament in her purse. She used it to hang several crystals from overhanging branches, to improve the feng shui. Dan Wolf cadged the rest to set up a line of snares. Naomi said a prayer apologizing to the animals who would to sacrifice their lives.

Blair, Serena, and Mrs. Taggert quietly discussed the remaining supplies, and then Blair, Serena and Naomi began searching the nearest thickets for wild edibles. Officer Hill sacrificed her nylons for a fish trap. Blair carved a pair of Cree fish spears. Simon and Darryl volunteereed to try them out.

Jim spent a couple of hours making a bow, twisting the cord from strips of Rhonda's nylon jacket. He charred the arrow tips to harden them, and walked off into the forest. He was out of sight by the time Blair tried to locate him. Blair spent fifteen minutes muttering under his breath. Half a mile away, Jim winced.

While he was gone Blair cobbled together a bark-soled sandal. He prevailed on Major Crimes to collect the supplies and set up an assembly line. Some of his daughters flailed vines into fiber, others made cord braids, while others shaped slabs of bark and polished them smooth with river stones. By late morning, when a break in the clouds let them move down to the river bank and sit in the sun, the girls were well enough shod to walk around the camp without limping.

Observing the camp from above as he returned, Jim saw them gathered out of the forest's shadow. Some of the girls were still trying to improve their sandals. Others had split off to help clean a pile of trophy-sized salmon, or cook skewers of fish over the fire. Three of them sat around Blair as he chipped a dark-colored stone into a spearpoint, with explanatory gestures.

Jim shifted the small deer on his shoulders so its weight was easier to carry. Of course Blair knew how to work stone. The amount of information filed in that shaggy head was frightening. If they found an abandoned UFO, Blair would probably have read the training manual back in kindergarten.

He shook his head at the ridiculous scenario. Most of the adults had collapsed on the sun-warmed sand. Simon stood higher on the bank, nearer Jim, watching the camp.

Something else was watching. Jim looked across the stream.

The golden bear was grizzly-sized, too big to be so close to them and unseen, except that it was in the dappled shade and nobody was looking. The stream was several yards wide, but only a few feet deep. In three or four strides the bear could be across it and among the undefended children.

As if he'd heard a warning Blair looked up at Jim, and then turned to see what Jim was focused on. He looked uphill again. His face showed stark panic. Jim dropped the carcass and started to crash down the slope. He wasn't going to make it. He couldn't get there in time. Blair bounced to his feet.

"Time for an exercise break. Everybody, let's conga!"

He pulled the three girls nearest him into a line.

"Now, it's step-two-three-KICK, step-two-three . . . ."

With varying degrees of reluctance, and an almost universal expression of, "These people are so weird!" the other girls allowed themselves to be pulled from their work. They took up the shouted count. Blair grabbed two sticks and knocked them together to keep the rhythm going. He'd put himself between them and the bear.

"Sweetie, that time in Trinidad . . . you remembered!" Naomi gurgled, and joined in.

"May I have this dance, ma'am?"

Taggert bowed showily over Aline's hand, and pulled her up from the sand. She laughed helplessly and let him push her into the line. Brown grabbed up an empty steel bowl.

"You call that drumming?" he yelled, and set up a counter-rhythm.

Kelso, Rhonda, Darryl and Officer Jiminez began clapping in time. Several of the girls, panting now, dropped out of the line to join them. Rafe grabbed Sarah Hill and pulled her into the dance. Even Serena Chang joined in, while Kimi shrieked with laughter on her back. Simon scowled at them.

"I haven't been dancing for years!" Caroline complained, and jumped in at the end of the line.

Jim skidded to a stop. When did Caroline learn to dance? He looked across the stream again.

The bear shifted from paw to paw, looking ridiculously as if it wanted to join in. Then it backed up the stream bank and disappeared among the trees. Jim noticed what the cacaphony was doing to his hearing and covered his ears. Below him Blair subsided to the strand and put his head on his knees.

The roasting salmon began to smoke. One of the girls ran to rescue it. Others noticed ravens squabbling over the half-cleaned fish. The conga line disintegrated.

"Blair Sandburg, I want an explanation!" Simon roared, stalking toward him.

Darryl tagged behind him. Blair waved a shaky hand at them. Jim skidded the rest of the way down the hillside and passed Simon.

"Breath, Chief. You did it. The bear left."

"Big," Blair gasped. "All I could think of was making noise. And zebras."

Simon frowned.

"Bear? What bear?"

"Zebras?" Jim asked. "What zebras?"

"Zebra stripes confuse lions when they charge. They can't keep track of their target," Blair said. "I thought noise and motion might put the bear off his game."

Darryl turned in a circle, trying to see what had spooked Blair.

"Like trash-talking? What bear?"

Only Blair would drive off a bear by dancing for it. Explaining calmed him enough that he could breath again. Jim had known it would. He helped the kid up.

"I thought about yelling for everybody to run, but some of us don't speak English. And . . . one of us would be at the back."

Blair himself, judging by previous self-sacrificing gestures. Jim had a brief nightmare image of the bear looming over his friend like a mountain. The imagined Blair grinned weakly and flashed a peace sign. Jim crouched, staring across the creek.

"It worked. The bear is gone," he reported.

"Uh, big guy, did you know you were growling just now?" Blair whispered, ducking his head so the others wouldn't see his mouth.

"Let's get the meat I dropped before something else grabs it. We need to put together some good-sized spears."

"Spears?" Simon asked. "What do we need something like that for?"

He had a hand on his weapon. Dan Wolf frowned at him.

"Captain, if you want to try to take out a grizzly with a handgun, be my guest. I may have time to climb a tree while you're julienned."

He looked away as Simon glared at him, but he didn't step back. Simon snorted.

"All right. Fine. Let's all play caveman."

"Ugh. Me Rafe. Beautiful woman want to go to woods to hunt mammoth?" Rafe asked Aricela.

"Right now, this beautiful woman wants hot salmon more than a hot man," the patrolwoman said. "Try me later."

"You tell him, sister," Sarah agreed.

Rafe mimed burnt fingers. Blair bounced on the balls of his feet. Once he opened his mouth, they'd never get away. Jim grabbed the kid's sleeve and started uphill.

ooooooo

They built new shelters, farther from the stream, and cleared away the duff for several fire rings. They had time and daylight enough to improve them. Simon's people might get chilled overnight, but with any luck everyone would stay dry. They had food too, with the greens Blair and Naomi gathered, and fish from the river, and meat from Dan's snares and Jim's kill. Simon looked for the next priority.

They sharpened sticks and kept a watch out, but the sun's warmth slanting between the trees was too attractive for them to leave the river bank yet. Sandburg had stretched a couple of skins on wooden frames. He was scraping the deer's hide, explaining the process to a fluctuating crowd of the rescued girls. He'd set the brains to dry in the sun, and made some joke about tanning.

Simon told him there was no point. They'd start toward civilization in a day or two. Sandburg just nodded, and talked about what a great lesson this was for the girls.

What he said was, "his daughters". And the girls flocked around him as if he did offer a thread of security. At least it kept them from bothering anyone else. Probably some Sandburgian scheme to disarm their suspicions before he made a move on one or more. Simon would have to keep an eye on the kid.

And there was Jim, cleaning the deer's gut, stripped to the waist, looking a lot like the warrior who'd fought with those Indians in Peru.

Jim Ellison looked uncomplicated and predictable. Simon was disquieted to realize what a chameleon he was. Soldier, warrior, vice cop, detective, and now this Sentinel stuff. He slipped into each position and filled it as perfectly as an actor. Made you wonder if you really knew the man.

The kid was a different matter. Simon could picture him in that Peruvian tribe. Right next to Jim, talking a mile a minute, poking his nose into everything, making passes at the wrong girls and getting beat up by their brothers . . . . He'd put on warpaint or whatever, but it wouldn't hide that essential Sandburg-ness.

And Simon couldn't imagine Jim leaving him behind. Sandburg would be an unchanging marker, whatever persona Jim put on.

A couple of the girls screamed. Simon reached for his weapon, and then -- reluctantly -- for the crude spear propped next to him. He scanned for the threat. The girls were bent over Blair. The kid had fallen sideways. Jim hadn't rushed over to him. Which meant . . . .

When Simon looked in that direction, Jim lay unconscious too.

He drafted Joel to help him carry them to a small shelter. With a nod he sent Megan and Rhonda to quiet the girls. Dan, Caroline and Serena were discussing etiology, poisoning, infection . . . .

"They'll be fine. Just working too hard. Get back to finishing the shelters, so we can sleep inside tonight. I'm not dumping these two out the door when you lot get cold."

"Dad? Is Sandburg . . . ."

After sharing two separate run-ins with the Sunrise Patriots, Darryl and Sandburg got along well. Simon put a hand on his son's shoulder.

"He'll be fine. You know how Sandburg always overdoes things. Let him sleep it off overnight."

Simon lowered himself to the ground next to his friends. Waiting for Jim, again. He'd bet this was more of the damn Sentinel stuff. Which meant Megan was the only person he could to talk to about it, and she knew even less than he did.

Jim and Blair weren't good company when they were unconscious. Naomi coiled herself into a position that made Simon ache just looking at it, and stopped moving. Professor Kelso asked Brown and Rafe to set his chair nearby.

"You know anything about that Anthropology stuff? Something to explain why the two of them aren't waking up?" Simon asked.

"My field is Poli-Sci," Kelso said. "That was very well done."

"What?"

"The distribution of labor. More than that, the assumption of authority. In a crisis situation, disagreement over the chain of command can lead to fatal delays. I don't see anyone questioning your right to give orders." He shrugged at Simon's glower. "Well, it is what I was trained for. What are your plans?"

Simon had planned to go over things with Jim this evening. He looked over at the unconscious bodies. He might not get that chance. For all Kelso's whistle-blowing, he had to know how to keep secrets too.

"We're not going to be able to walk out."

Kelso rubbed a hand along the arm of his chair. His voice was dispassionate, a dry statement of fact.

"You can't risk many lives for one."

Simon made his voice equally dry.

"Say that when the kid's awake. I dare you."

That surprised a laugh from the Rainier professor.

"You know him well."

"We can figure out a way for you to move. But how far will those girls get? And Mrs. Taggert . . . ."

His voice trailed off. He didn't want to talk about Aline Taggert's collapse. A person could give up all too easily, in the face of a disaster this big and this inexplicable. Maybe even himself.

"Best thing to do is find some place safe, and then send a party downstream. Maybe they'll find a town. Worst case scenario, they get all the way out to the ocean without finding anyone and head along the coast."

He let his hand fall on Jim's shoulder.

"Jim and Blair are the ones I want to send, though. If they take too long getting over this I'll have to try Connor instead. Maybe send her out with Dan Wolf, and hope he doesn't strangle her after the first six hours."

"Very interesting," Kelso murmured.

He fished a pad and pen from a satchel hung on his wheelchair, and scribbled a short note.

"Do you mind?" Simon growled. "This isn't some kind of academic field trip!"

"Grad students dream about a situation like this," Kelso said firmly. "I'm not about to waste the opportunity. I just have to make sure Blair and I won't be submitting to any of the same markets."


End file.
